Ohio Recruiting

I'm really impressed with how good we're doing in Ohio this year. I know it's always been our biggest pipeline state, but it just speaks to how well we're doing when even after a new coach, 3-9 and the 5 year streak with OSU, etc. kids from Ohio still want to come here.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing. -- Bo Schembechler

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As big as football is in Ohio and as much as they are raised to hate Michigan, I too have always wondered that. Besides our rich tradition, I think it helped that Bo was an assistant at OSU and was the head coach of Miami (OH). Also I don't think it hurts that our 2 most recent Heisman trophy winners were from the state of OH. :)

I think that when enough people root for one team (OSU) some kids are "rebellious" and root for its rival (UM). I know that when I was watching the subway series in baseball, and all my friends were cheering for the Yankees, I decided to cheer for the Mets simply because my friends were annoying the shit out of me. Regardless of the reasons I still cheer for the Mets to this day. Although, I'm not limiting the thought process to team-choice, I think that it may play a part in what causes these Ohio kids to root for their supposed archrival.

Good thing the Univ of Cincinnati isn't in the Big Ten then, or else hatred and more-heralded recruits might go there. Wait, does that make sense? Would the state of Ohio experience an MSU little-brother effect if UC were in the Big Ten? The world may never know. Or care....

Haha, agreed. I thought Bowling Green was the MSU of Ohio? Or is it Toledo? It must have been Ohio University after their near win over OSU a couple of years ago. That really pushed them to the upper echelon of the Ohio CFB-world.

UC would have to be second in any ranking, they're a BCS school (whether the Big East should be a BCS conference is debatable, but it is for now) while the others languish in MAC hell. Though getting to the Orange Bowl puts them in a sphere above Sparty.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing. -- Bo Schembechler

I can atest to that. My cousin and her husband (OSU law school grad) live in Columbus. They've got four kids. Two of them are rabid Buckeye fans, one is neutral, but the fourth went the Michigan route and he always represents. Can't be easy being a teenage M-fan in Columbus these days. The kid has gravitas.

While he did not have an offer in the sense that he looked at Michigan's offer, looked at OSU's offer, and picked UM's, Jerald Robinson was an eyelash away from being offered. The Buckeyes called him while he was in Ann Arbor to see if he had committed yet because they were about to offer, and he turned them down.

"I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly - or ever - gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe."

Yeah, the OP is talking specifically about our job recruiting Ohio this year though. If we pull anything like that again- say if Jordan Hicks takes a sudden interest and commits- that would be undeniably very successful. As it stands now our Ohio commits have mostly meh offer lists.

Well, if you really want to get technical/snippy, the '09 recruiting class was signed in, guess what, '09. The OP, and you, are talking about next year's class, '10. So, JT is a legitimate argument, being that he was signed THIS YEAR.

Cincinnati - the city, not the school - is its own little world in terms of allegiances. A lot of kids from there end up going to places other than OSU. As huge as OSU is in Ohio, it's not that big in Cincy. The Cincinnati paper doesn't even have a regular OSU sports beat writer. A lot of people there fancy UC as a sort of rival to OSU, which maybe dates back to the NCAA basketball finals the teams played against each other in the '60's.

As to NW Ohio, kids there grow up closer to Ann Arbor than they do Columbus. There are a lot of Michigan fans in Toledo.

All of this being said, U of M has not taken as many top kids out of Ohio from Tressel as they did from Cooper. The fact that Tressel had already been in Ohio when he became coach really helped, not to mention the horrible fact of OSU's recent success against Michigan.

Interesting about Cinci. I think most of know Toledo isn't Buckeye country, but I'd heard that about Cincinnati before and never really believed it. It's always felt, to me anyway, like Cincy might as well be in another state entirely... people from Columbus and Cleveland identify with each other on every level but Cincinnati is always shit out.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing. -- Bo Schembechler

Except that people who live in Cincinnati get pissed when called Cincitucky or are compared to Kentucky at all. I agree that Cincy (not cinci) is not like Columbus or Cleveland but they'd be damnned to be compared to Kentucky. (Even though there is a lot of Kentucky in a lot of people from that area). Maybe it comes from the huge UC UK basketball rivalry. Those two universities don't like each other.

It works both ways, too. I vividly remember visiting relatives in Columbus as a kid and everyone liked the Indians or the Browns but the Cincinnati teams were viewed as sort of the same as Detroit teams... like they were just over the state lines.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing. -- Bo Schembechler

I have had the same impression. One of the first fall Saturdays I lived in Cinci I went to a bar expecting to be jeered for asking to see the UM game (the laugher vs. Houston in '03). It was at the same time as OSU was nearly losing to San Diego State and the bar was going nuts, rooting for SDSU. I felt like I was *sniff* home again...

I guess this shouldn't be that surprising. The analogous situation in Michigan would be something like EL/MSU as Cinci/UC vs. Michigan as OSU. Of course, the analogy isn't perfect because of same conference vs. different conference.

Toledo better not be Buckeye country. Michigan students give that city plenty of business with all of those late-night Waffle House runs. It's just too bad that none of us except for Barking Sphincter actually ever went to UM.

there is going to be mixed alliances. Between graduates from both UM and OSU working in Detroit and Cleveland/Cincinnati, respectively, and a lot of crossed familial allegiances, there is a lot of gray area when it comes to the UM/OSU delineations. Toledo is a good example, which to me, is a 50-50 UM-OSU split.

In terms of football recruiting, I feel like the two schools have a very cyclical relationship. See: the last 20 years, which have seen two lop-sided decades by each team. When one school drags in all the surrounding talent and starts excelling compared to the other, recruits may start to head to the other school to find playing time. So some years we will pull in more Ohio talent when OSU's depth chart starts getting pretty crowded.

05
OSU - 11/avg 3.7*
M - 4/avg 3.5* but this is tainted becase Zoltan was obviously under-rated. He SHOULD have been awarded 6 stars.

I'm no forensic evidence specialist and but I'd hardly characterize our Ohio recruiting as "surprisingly good." It needs to be better and I'm sure it will. Lloyd took his lumps at the end of his career on the football field AND on the Ohio recruiting trail.

I think we're going to pay dearly for the '07 class. A middling recruiting class that's already suffered attrition to many of the top recruits (Mallet, Clemons) and possibly will lose it's best player (Warren) after this year. This is a key year for alot of '07 recruits (Williams, Molk, Huyge, Hemingway, Woolfolk); can they step up and deliver?

I don't think we're going to "pay dearly" for the '07 class. It was a good recruiting class; it just seems subpar because some of those guys didn't fit.

And you can't include potentially losing Donovan Warren to the NFL draft as an underclassman as "paying dearly." To enter the NFL draft early, he would have to have a great season. Did Michigan "pay dearly" for the '95 class because Charles Woodson left as a junior?

(By the way, I have a hard time believing Warren is going to leave after this year. Maybe if he has a monster season, sure. But we're talking about a guy with 2 career INT's, yet everyone prefaces every comment about Warren with "he might go to the NFL." Nothing he has done on the field suggests that he'll be ready for the NFL after this year.)

I agree. I always get frustrated when people speak of Donovan's pending NFL future. Like you, I wish he would exhibit that NFL potential, however he has yet to impress me* to the point that I consider him an early entry.

*Not saying he hasn't panned out, just that he has been hampered by injuries and hasn't statistically produced like I had once hoped he would

Yes. Nobody's saying he won't be a good player. But it seems like everybody has to throw in the caveat whenever Warren is mentioned that he might be an early entrant into the NFL draft.

Nobody said that about Brandon Minor, even though he was more valuable last year than Warren.

Nobody's saying it about Ezeh, even though he's arguably accomplished more than Warren after two seasons.

Very few people are suggesting that Schilling will take off early.

Etc.

If Donovan Warren weren't a 5-star coming out of high school, nobody would mention him as an early entrant. If he were a 3- or a 4-star kid who had accomplished the exact same amount in college so far, "Warren" and "NFL" probably wouldn't be mentioned in the same breath.

I agree with Magnus; it's far too early to judge the '07 class right now. I think if you look at the '05 class, you will see a reasonable explanation for UM decline. Over half of the 4 star or higher recruits never panned out, or never made it to UM.

You have to remember Ohio State is in on a number of players in Ohio... and it is also seen as a "down year" for the state in terms of football. Still, it's always good to recruit the state, there is a lot of talent regardless.

I never heard of it as being a down year in OH. I mean you may be right but I thought that has something to do with OSU not being able to give out as many schollies since they are down a bunch this year.

Since when is Ohio recruiting a necessity? The University of Michigan is in Michigan. Are we just going to pick random states and say that Michigan needs to recruit better in Tennessee or North Dakota?

Michigan should care about getting good players. Secondly, Michigan should care about getting good players from Michigan. Third, Michigan should worry about getting good players.

if you don't care if they come of Hawaii or Africa then why should they secondly care about getting good players from Michigan. The talent level in tennessee and North Dakota are not even comparable combined to the annual talent level in Ohio. That is why we need to recruit Ohio, It is extremely close and extremely talented. The HS talent in Ohio is usually in the top 5 while Michigan is not. Texas, Cali, Fla., Ohio and Penn are almost always loaded with talent. not tennessee or ND.

I'm not saying we don't need to recruit Ohio. I'm saying we shouldn't judge our classes based on our Ohio recruiting. If there's a good WR in Kentucky and slightly-less-good WR in Ohio, I'd prefer that we take the guy from Kentucky.

Second, to maintain allegiances, I think Michigan should worry about getting good players from Michigan. The local people are the ones who buy tickets, merchandise, etc. If we recruit all our players from 1,000 miles away, that would obviously make local people care a wee bit less.

Notice I made a hierarchy:

1. Get good players.
2. Get good players from Michigan (I didn't say get shitty players just because they're from Michigan).

Oh please. We all know this program has been built on the backs of players from Ohio and that most of our best players are from out of state. If you want to see a team made up of the best Michigan has to offer, there's a school up in East Lansing for you.

When your team is winning, be ready to be tough, because winning can make you soft. On the other hand, when your team is losing, stick by them. Keep believing. -- Bo Schembechler

Sev. yrs ago I went to a semi-final large HS game at the Rubber Bowl. My nephew was the starting RB for Cleveland St. Ignatius. The stadium was packed, in a way it never is for the FINALS in Illinois. I suspect there were more there than the finals in Michigan. When living in FL, hs football was huge. Same thing, to a lesser degree, living a year in LA about 15 yrs ago. In contrast, I was in inner-city Indy last month, and basketball was the "popular" sport. I happened to be at a Boys & Girls Club the same afternoon Marlin Jackson led a clinic for the kids. Now, Jackson was a draw, but it was obvious that basketball was where the stud athletes went.

What's the point? Just that I think that in Ohio, the kids with strong athletic ability gravitate to football. Same thing in Florida. In Indiana, and prob. to some degree in Michigan, the kids would gravitate to basketball. A number of kids are really multi-sport. If hs football was as big in Michigan as it was in Ohio, there would be more FB players coming out of Michigan.

While you can take a person with "raw" athletic ability and mold them, some of that molding realistically needs to happen prior to college. This is why it is so key to recruit Ohio, and also the areas where football is king (TX & FL, and PA & CA to a lesser degree.) If Michigan picks up one 4 star FB player every year from TX, OH, FL, PA, & CA, and maybe one from MI, we have a great base to the year in terms of recruiting.

“Top to bottom Michigan is about excellence, greatness. You have my pledge I will carry forward the excellence of Michigan football." Jim Harbaugh, December 30, 2014